Fully half of English women’s football clubs in the Women’s Super League are managed by men. Tottenham Hotspur Women head coach Robert Vilahamn is one of them. This phenomenon is hardly unique in women’s sorts across disciplines, leagues and countries, but it provides challenges — how do you continue to uplift women’s prominence in sport when fully half of the top jobs are going to men?
Vilhaman spoke about his position with Spurs Women in a recent interview on BBC 5 Live, as printed on BBC’s website, and he both defended his position as a male in a female sports league and expressed understanding about amplifying and listening to women’s voices.
“You can ask me ‘why are you working in the women’s game, shouldn’t you give the chance for a women’s coach to be head coach? I hope more and more [women] become head coaches. I hope there becomes women coaches in the men’s game more.
“But my way of doing it is to make sure I’m a good ally for gender equity and to have different age groups of coaches around me – and especially female coaches. You can say whatever you want to me but I choose a female over a male if I can do it because I feel like somebody needs to do that, because it [happens] so much the opposite way.”
Two of Vilahamn’s three assistant coaches — assistant coach Vicky Jepson and first team coach and former Mexico international Bri Campos — are women. Vilahamn says he has a clear-eyed understanding that he does not, and likely will never have, a full understanding of what it means to be a women playing women’s sports, and is committed to using his position to continue to uplift women’s sports.
“I actually have a big role in a big club on a big stage so I can actually use my role to make sure I make a difference. Purpose in life is something you want to have – and I have it, and I can actually do something about it. It’s quite cool.
“When you work in the women’s game, you kind of realize even more what gender equity is and how it is to be a woman in the world, because you need to fight so much to get the right stuff, to get what you deserve [and] sometimes you actually get the opposite.”
There’s a lot of work yet to be done to promote and encourage equity in sports, especially women’s sports. Vilahamn seems to recognize the tension of being a male head coach of a women’s football team and the implied understanding that he’s potentially preventing a qualified woman from the position. And yet, I quite like the answers he gives here. Vilahamn recognizes the privilege he has as a man in what is still a mostly male-dominated society, and yet is using his position to advocate for further opportunities for women in women’s soccer. It’s a tightrope, but he walks it well.
